Hard Drive setup/allocation + Workflow

Sorry if this has been answered before but I have found lots of conflicting information and would greatly appreciate some help.

I am getting a PC built for Media Composer editing from my home studio.

I was wondering which type of Internal Hard drives I should get built into this PC and the best workflow for efficiency. Would it be more beneficial to run an external raid type setup and only have the internal ssd for the operating system etc? A good backup system is also required.

I understand that having a ssd for the operating system and software makes sense. But I am confused which options to use for projects, media storage, rendering, consolodation, archiving etc etc.

next 4 bay case has a fast raid for high Rez media when uprezing long form stories

next 4 bay has consolidate and archive drives

The basic idea here is to have the dives separated into those that are reading and those that are writing, for example ;

camera originals are read from the project drive (using the “link” command) and written (transcoded) to the media drives, another example, when rendering, the media is read from the media drives an written to the render drive, another example, when consolidating, the media is written to the consolidate drive.

You don’t really need the raid drive, unless you are working on high Rez or long projects.

Workflow

link to the camera originals

Transcode camera original to appropriate avid media

import music graphics etc

edit

render out approvals ( I still use reference quick times and a external media encoder to make mpeg4 movs)

Re: Hard Drive setup/allocation + Workflow

Difficult to say if it’s okay for small set up depends on the size of the work you’re doing.

Couple of points, have you tried the nas connection with the Rez you want to cut at?

2tb seems a bit small to me, for a project drive, 3-4 tb seems like the sweet spot for price per gig in my country

you can always expand! I find the write speed of the render and export drives to be important, to make that process efficient, as my cuts for approval are often over an hour, and to meet deadlines , Speed is essential.

Re: Hard Drive setup/allocation + Workflow

Hard drive 1 will be enough for OS and projects, drive 2 could be better used to hold mediafiles, provided that it's at least a two disks stripe

ADG:

Nas 4x 4tb = 16tb (for all my media, exports and archive)

can't tell if the particular NAS You're using has enough throughput, these devices are usually meant for backup, speed is not their priority. If You did not purchase already make sure that it's a box equipped with fast connections and fast hard drives; You may roll Your own searching the web for information on fast boxes and choosing fast HDs. If You do not need to share mediafiles over the network with multiple workstations at once You may be better off with an external RAID array, eventually sharing the disk to exchange files with other workstations over Your lan. You may get away with an "ordinary" NAS if working with lightweight proxies.

ADG:

External 2tb drive - for renders/cache etc

if that is a single disk and not a RAID array, You'll be better off to dedicate such a disk to audio mediafiles only, requireng less throughput than video, just make sure that the box has fast connections and is equipped with a 7200 rpm disk instead of 5400 like the cheaper boxes around.